[W]hen you have just been named the Times Jerusalem bureau chief, that may be a good time to hold off [from tweeting]: everyone on all sides is waiting to figure out where you stand and, having done so, to accuse you of being wrong; using Twitter to feint toward certain views—or even just to build a presence—is pretty much the worst thing you can do. Get to Jerusalem, settle in, start producing copy, and be judged on that ...

On top of that, Rudoren’s tweets in the past 24 hours haven’t been innocuous. Tweeting at Ali Abuminah, the editor of the frankly anti-Israel Electronic Intifada Website, that she’s “heard good things”—of someone who advocates boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel and a one-state solution—is rightly making supporters of Israel suspicious of her objectivity and of where she stands. Ditto retweeting an article titled “Palestine: Love in the Time of Apartheid.” Even tweeting praise for Peter Beinart’s forthcoming book suggests, at least, that she favors one narrative of the conflict over the others.

The most charitable reading says Rudoren possesses an astounding lack of sense of the profile of the post to which she has been appointed; of how she is going to be perceived; and of the fact that she is betraying her opinions before she has even started reporting...

And the less charitable, perfectly plausible reading, is that she is slanted toward anti-Zionism. The Times needs to clean up this mess, and it starts by telling her to—for the love of God—stop tweeting.

Adam Kredo of Washington Free Beacon, the new conservative news site, also weighed in with an aggressive stance on Rudoren's tweets.

"Already, Rudoren is beaming out cutesy missives to prominent, self-described anti-Zionist players such as Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a website that contains a treasure trove of writings highly antagonistic toward the Jewish state," Kredo wrote, before listing a number of other such "missives" to Mondoweiss, "an online portal that is known to traffic in Israel-bashing," and Abunimah, "who has referred to Zionism as 'one of the worst forms of anti-Semitism in existence today.'"

The conservative Jewish magazine Commentary picked up Kredo's piece as well, and suggested that Rudoren was "reaching out to anti-Israeli activists."

As I noted yesterday, the Times's current Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was a subject of controversy because of his son's service in the Israeli Defense Forces, but he made it through a four-year tenure providing what most saw as balanced coverage. (In an internal memo announcing his departure from the position, editors Joe Kahn and Sam Sifton praised Bronner's "unerring sense of fairness.") Rudoren isn't even on the job yet and she's already drawing fire.

I reached out to Rudoren by phone, email, and Twitter, but have not heard back, though she did tweet this earlier today:

Thanks for all the new folos, and the advice re Tweeting.Plan to Tweet from all sides of conflict. Welcome suggestions of other books.